Pierre Frey
Forget the rolled, repeat patterned designs you envisage when you think of wallpaper. Pierre Frey’s archive is a library of works of art that immediately transport you to exotic palaces and tropical jungles or back in time to Mughal fretwork or Byzantine murals. With 398 patterns to choose from, every whim is catered for. You’ve just got to be brave enough to follow it.
WE LOVE: This captivating ‘Le Jardin du Palais’ exotic menagerie
Barneby Gates
If you’re looking for a modern take on a classic design, Oxfordshire-based Barneby Gates offers beautiful papers in a range of heritage and contemporary colourways. For seaside homes the scallop shells, seahorses or crabs would fit the bill. Or why not wow visitors with a metallic flocked finish that picks out the hardware in your bathroom suite for a beautifully pulled together look.
WE LOVE: This zesty lemon design that immediately transports us to the Amalfi Coast.
Timorous Beasties
Established in 1990 by two Glasgow School of Art graduates, Timorous Beasties is perhaps one of the original modern wave of statement wallpaper designers. Too cool to just be wallpaper, their ‘wall coverings’ feel anarchic, psychedelic and brilliantly fun. Perfect pared with this year’s bathroom trend for jet black sanitaryware for a truly rock and roll vibe.
WE LOVE: The ‘City Toile’ range, featuring the cityscapes of London, New York and Edinburgh in a modern toile style.
Quentin Blake for Osborne & Little
If you’re looking to delight both small and adult guests alike, Quentin Blake’s range of illustrated wallpapers for Osborne & Little will definitely fit the bill. Choose from a gaggle of farmyard animals in Quentin’s inimitable animated style, or plump for his characterful, graphic alphabet. Fun and packed with timeless charm, they are guaranteed to cheer you up every time you open the door.
WE LOVE: The Cockatoos. Each one has its own personality. All come in brilliant riot of colour.
MuralsWallpaper
Reimagining the way we hang wallpaper, MuralsWallpaper doesn’t think in rolls, but in whole walls. Type in the dimensions of the feature wall – or walls –you want to adorn and they’ll deliver you a sized-to-fit mural that will cover your space perfectly.
WE LOVE: The Ancient Greek Pottery print, with oversized urns in striking black ink drawings.
A Paris Chez Antoinette Poisson
In 2012, Julie Stordiau, Vincent Farelly and Jean-Baptiste Martin – all trained paper conservators – came together to create ‘A Paris Chez Antoinette Poisson’, a paper archive house with designs reminiscent of 18th-century French interiors. Despite the historical references, the designs feel modern somehow, or at least ‘on-trend’, with big bold botanicals and frescos in hand-block printed style.
WE LOVE: The absinthe green of the tile-effect Mézieres paper, a ‘reinterpretation’ of an original paper taken from the Chateau de la Mézieres in the Loire Valley.
Maison Margot
Gone are the stacks of Country Life by the loo (a bit grubby when you come to think of it). Nowadays homeowners are giving their guests toilet-time entertainment on the walls instead. Maison Margot has got the maximalist style covered with a totally immersive House of Hackney-esque edit of lush, tropical prints with exotic flora and fauna to gaze upon.
WE LOVE: The vintage architectural drawings made by the French artist Charles Percier, collaged together into an engrossing mural-cum-sketchbook.
By Lydia Mansi
September 2020
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